New Old Wave

Why Narthex took 25 years to drop their debut.

by A.D. Amorosi

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Published: Mar 14, 2007

The latest swell of new wave reunions?

THAT WAS THEN: Narthex — Mike Ace (left) and Dean Sabatino — made their Philly debut in 1982, playing the East Side Club and Landmark Tavern. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Watching Sting riff some tedious song with a death-rattle voice coming out of wrinkled head too old for his buff body? Not for me.

Seeing Pixies and Gang of Four continue on? It's a miracle of modern money. I mean, "science." The kind that blinded Thomas Dolby.

With the exception of dark-tech locals like Bunnydrums and hardcore heads like Pagan Babies reforming, there isn't much to wave about.

That is, unless Narthex reunited.

Which won't happen.

We won't get to hear swift kicking drums backing up a spindly riffing guitar and a squeaking voice singing nervous songs like "Morning Sickness" and lines about shaky hands and queasy stomachs anytime soon. Not live, anyway.

"I no longer seem to have access to the sort of hyper, puppy dog energy needed to do those arrangements justice," says Mike Ace, the singing and guitar-playing half of Narthex. "It comes out more like Lou Reed jamming with Leadbelly — in a bad way. That would be unfair to people expecting to hear a reasonable facsimile of what's on the disc."

Narthex is the way-early-'80s duo that Ace shared with Dean "Clean" Sabatino, a drummer who would go on to fame and sorta-fortune with the Dead Milkmen. And the disc is Twin Cities, never-before-issued sessions (10 songs, 24 minutes) taped at DAK Studios in Sellersville, Pa., in 1982 and finally released by Philly jazz-bo Skip Heller's Skyeways label late last year.

The duo met in high school. While Ace made kit synthesizers, Sabatino began to play the drums — on a black Naugahyde Pearl kit he still uses.

"We first started playing together in July '78, five days after I got my first guitar," says Ace. "There was no big aesthetic plan." The zealously frisky sound that the two had developed evolved through simple trial and error.

"And clumsy accident," says Ace.

Named for an Edward Gorey illustration, Narthex had a sound born in the pre-post-punk days of Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, the Bonzo Dog Band and Devo before they wore flowerpots. It was a spare, clean, rapid-fire new wave music, very of-the-moment. They weren't angry punks. They were goofballs who made twangy, arty songs with weird mathlete robot lyrics like "We use mechanical manners/ objects have a niche" and titles like "Tab A—Slot B" whose beats were hyperactive and guitars nicely angled.

After playing Bucks' area gigs in 1980 — including their first in a mobile home under the name Zero — Ace and Sabatino started attending shows in Philadelphia. "I was underage and using a fake ID to get past Shamus at the East Side Club," remembers Sabatino. They brewed up homemade tapes (the first of which, Wally Rock, got played in 1981 on WRFT-FM in Ambler) and poured cash into the brisk studio sessions heard on Twin Cities. Narthex made its Philly debuts in January 1982 — one show at the Landmark Tavern, the other at the East Side.

"We submitted our tapes to labels early on — too early — but got no takers and stopped trying," says Ace. "We were aware of DIY self-releases, but we'd blown our money in the studio." They didn't exactly break up in June of 1983, but Dean went on to Dead Milkmen and Ace retreated to "home recording geekery," as he calls it.

"The Narthex session tapes sat in Mike's closet all these years," says Sabatino.

Did it feel like they satisfied their goals? At the time, no.

"But in retrospect, not bad," says Ace. "We came out of a small town, played some killer sets and participated in one of the major musical movements of the 20th century."

"I love 'Are You From England?' for its lyrical content," says Sabatino, 45. "'Mistake' sounds full and rocking."

"And it's gratifying that 'the kids' dig it," says Ace, 47. He seems as excited about each track's individual features as he did when he recorded them. Sabatino's drums "slay" him every time. And his own guitars on tunes like "Crazy Rhythms"?

"There's a different sort of skeleton inside that critter. After a couple of decades of indie evolution, our sound doesn't come off as strange as it used to."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

Read more about Narthex at narthex.ookworld.com.

 

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